Two Bay Area restaurants, as well as four in Southern California, are among the best new restaurants in the U.S., according to the New York Times’ The Restaurant List 2025. Oakland’s Sun Moon Studio, which recently won its first Michelin star, and stylish San Francisco wine bar Verjus were included in the list released this week.
Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu opened tiny fine dining restaurant Sun Moon Studio last year in an industrial part of West Oakland, and the San Francisco Chronicle named it its favorite new restaurant of 2024 (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). The chefs “bring levity to the 12- to 14-course menu — whether it’s a soulful housemade water kimchi paired with halibut crudo and discreetly ornamented with puffed buckwheat and kumquat, or lap cheong snuggled inside a cloud of steamed brioche,” the New York Times wrote. New York Times editor Eleanore Park also named it her personal favorite restaurant of the year, writing that it made her “emotional (in a good way).”
While Verjus originally opened in 2019 and shuttered during the pandemic, Michael and Lindsay Tusk (the couple behind Quince and Cotogna) revived it last fall. The candle-lit Jackson Square wine bar serves French bistro classics like steak au poivre and omelette Boursin. “Version 2.0 is exactly the restaurant the city needs: cosmopolitan, grown up and delightfully non-tech,” the New York Times wrote…